Our guest this week, Tamika, has been a middle school English/Language Arts teacher in Kentucky’s largest school district for 16 years. She is also a vibrant Bookstagrammer at her handle, @Thereadingroom444. Her goal is to make reading come alive to anyone who watches her feed. This summer she not only posted videos of her teaching tactics while reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning, but she also used her creativity to re-imagine book covers. Tamika is a voracious reader who is eager to share her love of literature and inspire excitement about finding books that you are passionate about.

Our guest this week, David Crosby, is a recent graduate of North Oldham County High School in Kentucky. He, like many kids growing up in the 21st century, had an undying affection for the Dave Pilkey Captain Underpants series of books. The Captain Underpants books revolve around two 4th grade boys who draw their own comic books that feature their superhero, Captain Underpants, who accidentally becomes real.

Do you read historical fiction or narrative nonfiction and wonder where your favorite authors do their research for the books you love? Our guest this week, Jennie Cole, is an archivist with the Filson Historical Society. An archivist is like a highly specialized librarian who takes care of historical materials such as letters, diaries, transcripts, photos, or even objects and organizes them to preserve them for the public use. And the Filson Historical Society is just a different kind of library; a research library of the history of our region.

Welcome book lovers back to our first episode of Season 3. I was away on vacation so Carrie teamed up with former guest and Ohio friend Giselle Spurgeon, to co-host this week to interview a fellow Ohioan Melanie Moore, owner of the Cincy Book Bus.

**Our replay this week is an episode that was our first of Season 2 back in January before Covid hit. We talked with children’s librarian with the Louisville Free Public Library system William Sutton. If you are anything like Carrie and I, you are sorely missing your libraries and the dedicated people who staff them. In fact, our library system in Louisville KY furloughed the majority of its librarians for 3 months and only in the last month have patrons been able to do curbside pickup for book holds.

Carrie and I are still on vacation this week but you can find us with all new interviews and episodes August 5. But Today we have a replay of our interview with Mick Sullivan. Mick is a friend of the show. He helped us begin our adventure in broadcasting and podcasting by giving us the tools and the confidence to get started. He is the creator of the award winning children’s history podcast, The Past and the Curious, which was recently named by the New York Times as one of the best children’s podcasts.

We reached way back in the archives to our first season and one of our very early guests, Amy Attaway of the Kentucky Shakespeare Theater. If you are a book nerd like us, it just doesn’t seem like summer in Louisville without seeing one of the great free performances under the stars in Central Park of one of the Bard’s plays.

Our guest today, Julia Royston, is a former school librarian who began her first publishing company as a way to publish her own books in the exact way she wanted them. She jokes that she has “control issues”. But those issues led her to become an entrepreneur who now owns and operates two publishing companies that have been around for over 12 years, in an age when most businesses are lucky to make it past the 3-5 year mark. BK Royston Publishing and Royal Media and Publishing, located in Southern Indiana, are her two full service imprints that primarily publish black authors; one focusing on children’s, inspirational, and religious books and the other publishing more mainstream fiction such as mysteries, urban fiction, and romance.

In our episode this week, Amanda talks about how she became involved with the Jane Austen Society of North America--Greater Louisville Region and what their meetings are like, how it seems the things she can learn about Jane Austen’s books and her time period are endless, and why newbies shouldn’t feel intimidated, and why the Louisville chapter of the society is known as the Fashion region.

Are you a reader that shies away from dystopian or pandemic themed books because they just seem too scary in our current reality or do you “lean in” to the darkness and find it “fun”?

Our guest this week, Giselle Spurgeon, is a reader who has long had a fascination with this sub-genre of work.